GAMES ARE
EATING THE WORLD

2026-08-18

After the kings: Hank Chien, Robbie Lakeman and the market the film never shot

Hank Chien took Donkey Kong in 2010 with 1,061,700. Robbie Lakeman and Wes Copeland then traded the record inside six hours. A high score is a market, not a monument.

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Hank Chien, Robbie Lakeman and Wes Copeland are the Donkey Kong players who did the work The King of Kong never filmed. Chien, a plastic surgeon in Queens, took the world record on 26 February 2010 with 1,061,700. Lakeman, from Concord, New Hampshire, broke Chien's four-year hold on 5 September 2014 with 1,141,800. Copeland passed him on 17 September 2015 with 1,170,500. Lakeman took it back in six hours, at 1,172,100.

The movie ended on a coronation. The sport continued as a market. Prices moved overnight. The monument was already for sale.

Dr. Kong, then the streamers

Chien was born in Taiwan on 4 August 1974 and moved to the United States at two. Forest Hills, Stuyvesant High School, a 12th-place finish in the national mathematics contests, the USA Mathematical Olympiad team, Harvard, Mount Sinai. By day he rebuilt faces in Queens. At night he sat at a cabinet until the kill screen. The press called him Dr. Kong, which is cute and also exact: he treated the record like a long operation, four years of revisions, 1,068,000 in December 2010, 1,090,400 in February 2011, then 1,110,100, 1,127,700, and a personal best of 1,138,600 on 5 November 2012.

He won the first Kong-Off, 19 and 20 March 2011 in New Jersey, with 994,400, in a field that included Wiebe and Mitchell. He won Kong-Off 4 in Pittsburgh. A short documentary, Doctor Kong: Cutting Up the Competition, followed the first raid on the record. Then he stepped back. Four years is a long time to hold a number that a younger man can hunt on Twitch after his shift.

Lakeman had practised two and a half years and taken a bet that he could crack the top twenty. The session that dethroned Chien ran more than three hours and finished 3,200 points ahead. He often streamed. The first world record, though, was offline, in the old style, a man alone with a board. He raised his own mark in December 2014 and again in June 2015. The Verge wrote him up as the end of a surgeon's reign. It was the start of a relay.

Copeland arrived as a different animal, a player who talked about perfect games the way speedrunners talk about frames. On 17 September 2015 he put up 1,170,500. Before the next night was over Lakeman had 1,172,100. They swapped again in October, January, April. On 5 May 2016 Copeland posted 1,218,000, a run Polygon and others called as close to a perfect Donkey Kong as the kill screen allows. Lakeman said he was done, then was not done. He took 1,230,100 on 22 December 2017 and 1,247,700 on 2 February 2018.

John McCurdy, who is not in the film and barely in this sentence, then joined the market: 1,249,500 in March 2019, 1,259,000 in May, 1,272,700 on 11 January 2021. Lakeman answered with 1,260,700 live on Twitch on 15 June 2020, 1,271,100 on 22 September 2020, and 1,272,800 on 8 June 2021, one hundred points above McCurdy. Guinness, slow as ever, still listed Lakeman's 1,260,700 as the mark when we checked. The live board had already moved.

The sequel Gordon did not shoot

Seth Gordon has talked about a scripted follow-up, Wiebe and Mitchell after the documentary ate their lives. That film, if it arrives, will still be about two men from 2007. The actual sequel was a plastic surgeon, a New Hampshire grinder, a perfectionist, a Twitch chat, and a tournament series called the Kong-Off that moved from New Jersey to Denver to Pittsburgh to Banning, California.

Mitchell's last accepted live-style hold was 2010. Wiebe's last hold ended in January 2011. Everything after that is post-cinema Donkey Kong: streamed attempts, multi-hour shifts, a leaderboard that can change twice before breakfast. Dean Saglio had already posted 1,206,800 on emulation while Chien still held the arcade throne. The split between MAME and original hardware, the same split that later ate Mitchell's tapes, was now a pair of markets with different closing prices.

A monument is a statue you visit. A market is a price you can trade. High score, after the kings, became the second thing. You could watch Lakeman and Copeland pass a number back and forth the way day traders pass a futures contract, except the underlying asset was a 1981 ROM and the transaction fee was three hours of wrists.

Kong-Offs kept a civic version of the sport alive: Chien, Jeff Willms, Lakeman, Jeff Wolfe, regional cups in Australia, a UK event announced for 2026. The world record itself left the room and went onto a living room stream. That is not a fall from grace. It is what happens when a documentary makes a scene valuable enough that more than two people want to be in it.

A high score is a market, not a monument

The King of Kong myth says there is one king. The table after 2010 says there is a quote that lasts until tonight. Chien held for years because fewer people were hunting. Lakeman and Copeland held for hours because the hunt had a live audience. McCurdy and Lakeman then traded hundreds of points at a height, 1.27 million, that would have been science fiction in Wiebe's garage.

None of this makes the 2007 film dishonest. It makes it a period piece. The period is the last moment when a Donkey Kong record could still feel like a crown. After Chien, the crown is a ticker. After Copeland's "perfect" game, the remaining points are scraps on the last boards. After Lakeman's Twitch nights, the proof is a URL, not a referee in a striped shirt.

If you are building a leaderboard now, this is the lesson the movie cannot teach you. Freeze a score and you get a statue, and statues attract lawsuits. Publish a tape, a timestamp, a hardware flag, and let the next shift beat it, and you get a market. Markets are rude. They are also how a 45-year-old arcade game stayed a sport after its two most famous players left the top line.

Chien went back to surgery. Copeland's 1,218,000 still looks like a wall from 2016. Lakeman, as of the last well-sourced arcade mark in 2021, sat one hundred points above the rest. The number will move again. That is the point.

Fact, hypothesis, folklore

BasketClaim
FactChien 1,061,700 on 26 February 2010, personal best 1,138,600 on 5 November 2012. Lakeman 1,141,800 on 5 September 2014. Copeland 1,170,500 on 17 September 2015, Lakeman 1,172,100 the next day. Copeland 1,218,000 on 5 May 2016. Lakeman 1,272,800 on 8 June 2021.
HypothesisStreaming, not talent alone, is why the record started moving in hours instead of years after 2014. Confidence: medium-high.
FolkloreThat Wiebe and Mitchell are still the two names that matter on the live board. They matter in the culture. On the arcade table they have not been the quote since 2011.

Sources

Retrieved 18 August 2026.